Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [278]
When Jehanne had spoken to me of the pleasures of untutored ardor, I hadn't truly understood. How could I? I was too young and inexperienced. Tonight I understood. It was a gift that Snow Tiger offered me, a gift dangling from a fragile thread of trust forged under the unlikeliest of circumstances. I let her do what she wished, reveling in it. I drank in her kisses and caresses, returning them in kind, pleasure rolling over me like a river.
I felt the exact moment when she faltered—not scared, only uncertain of how to express her desire.
Smooth and sure, I took control back from her. I undressed her; I undressed us both, peeling away the bedamned robes that separated us. Like a good attendant, I hung them carefully on the stand.
"Everything?" she asked me.
"Everything," I confirmed, my hands gliding over her breasts. They were shallow, but lovely. I dipped my head to capture one nipple between my lips.
Her back arched.
When at last I moved one hand lower, parting her thighs, Snow Tiger tensed. I listened to Naamah and traced a lazy circle with one fingertip.
"This is called Naamah's Pearl," I whispered, capturing her hand and making her feel it, letting her regain a sense of control through understanding. "Do you see? It is the seat of a woman's pleasure."
"I see!" she gasped.
I kissed a path down her body, feeling her taut belly quiver beneath my lips.
"You're not—"
I spread her thighs gently, teasing her nether-lips apart with the tip of my tongue, circling her pearl. I teased and coaxed her with the utmost delicacy, until she groaned and sank her hands into my hair, surrendering wholly to the sensation, her hips rising toward my mouth. I smiled, and with an inexorable gentleness that was the very opposite of the dragon-lashed storm of that other encounter so very long ago, I brought her to climax, delighting in the feel of her shuddering beneath me.
In the aftermath, she looked sweet and flushed, at once bright-eyed and languid. She kissed me, tasting her juices on my lips, pulled back to consider it, and kissed me again. "It pleases you to do that?"
"Aye, it does."
"Hmm." She stroked my bare skin, cupped one breast. I shivered with pleasure, my nipple hardening, and watched the awareness of her own power to bestow pleasure dawning in the princess' eyes. "Maybe I am more like your licentious D'Angelines than I thought."
She was.
Naamah's blessing had freed her to be tender and ardent and loving, and she was all of these things, more than I ever could have reckoned, so much so that by the end, I wasn't sure which of us the goddess had blessed more. There was an unexpected capacity for playfulness in her that charmed me beyond words. I wondered if she had even known it existed, and prayed I wouldn't be the only person in the world to experience it.
"I will miss you, Moirin," Snow Tiger said afterward. "Very much."
"Ohh…" The call of my diadh-anam was fainter than it had been since Bao first left. "I could stay awhile longer." It seemed like a very good idea.
"No." She shook her head. "The dragon said there was time for grace. This, tonight, was grace. More would be indulgence."
I opened my mouth to protest.
"And no." She pressed a finger to my lips. "Before you say it, no, I am not punishing myself. I do not think I am undeserving of indulgence. And it is not because it is against custom." She smiled. "I suspect I would even be forgiven it, at least for a time. People would say I am only purging an excess of yang energy left behind by the dragon."
"Why, then?"
Her expression turned grave. "It is too easy to accept the comfort you offer. Too easy to become dependent on it. I have a duty that lies elsewhere. You have a destiny to follow."
I toyed with her hair, heartily sick and tired of my everlasting destiny. "A week is a very short time," I said. "A week could not possibly be reckoned much of an indulgence." Inspiration struck me. "Besides, do you not wish to be certain you are capable of love-making without a goddess in attendance?"
The princess narrowed her eyes at me. "That is a shameless